


Source of Entertainment

by nirejseki



Category: Babylon 5
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Hate Sex, M/M, Under-negotiated Kink, a race through dark places, season 2 episode 7
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-10
Updated: 2019-02-10
Packaged: 2019-10-25 17:50:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17729906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nirejseki/pseuds/nirejseki
Summary: Stuck with Bester on a spaceship left dead in space, Garibaldi considers an unexpected alternative to boredom.





	Source of Entertainment

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Mimm](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mimm/gifts).



“So,” Garibaldi says when the agony of boredom finally outweighs his overwhelming desire not to hear the words ‘I told you so’ come out of Bester’s mouth. “What do you think will kill us first – the thirst or the cold?”

“Neither,” Bester says. His voice sounds neutral, or as neutral as it ever sounds, the smarmy bastard. “As you are well aware, this shuttle – however dead in the water – will come back into Babylon 5’s scanning range when it completes its rotation, which will happen well before the temperature drops down to unbearable levels.”

Lots of fancy words just to say ‘I told you so.’

“If I say the words, will you stop thinking them?” Bester asks, audibly irritated.

Garibaldi scowls. “If you stopped reading my mind, it wouldn’t bother you so much, now would it?”

“Unfortunately, Mr. Garibaldi, at the moment, you represent my sole source of entertainment.”

Garibaldi glares at him. That was _definitely_ an ‘I told you so.’

(When she comes to rescue them, Ivanova’s going to tell Garibaldi that he deserved to be stuck out here with Bester for hours and she’ll be right, too, because he _should_ have checked out whether the thruster was busted from that last shot the way Bester’d suggested, but he’d been so _sure_ that he’d managed to dodge all of the shots from those runaway telepaths that Bester had oh-so-suspiciously lost interest in investigating. Garibaldi really should’ve just dropped the whole thing the way Sheridan’d told him to, but nooooo, he’d _had_ to insist, and now Bester knew they were alive and out on the run instead of thinking they were all dead – _and_ the two of them were now stuck in a dead ship. Together. Yay.)

“I say ‘unfortunately,’” Bester continues thoughtfully, “because your mind is, as always, an insipid place.” 

Garibaldi does his best to visualize Bester being hit on the head with a giant mallet.

“Perhaps ‘infantile’ is the proper word.”

“Well, if you can think of something better to do,” Garibaldi growls. “I’m all ears.”

“Certainly. Let’s have sex.”

Garibaldi had previously not been aware that it was possible to do a spit-take without, you know, drinking anything first, but every day’s a brand new adventure on Babylon 5.

A horrible, wretched, highly likely to be traumatizing adventure.

“You’re joking!”

“And _you’re_ interested,” Bester says. “Your sexual attraction to telepaths has been noted in your file.”

“To _Talia_! Talia Winters! Who is – and you might not have noticed this – _female_ –”

“Mr. Garibaldi.”

“ _What?!_ ”

“I haven’t stopped being a telepath in the last few minutes.”

Damnit. 

“Don’t you people hate physical contact?” he complains, since pretending not to be into guys – his usual go-to defense, especially back when he was in GROPOS – clearly isn’t going to work here. “Especially with us ‘mundanes’? And, more to the point, don’t you, personally, hate _me_?”

“I dislike unnecessary physical contact,” Bester agrees. “I’m certain we can work around that.”

Sometimes, Garibaldi wishes he wasn’t an atheist, just so he’d have someone to pray to for patience.

“That still,” he says through gritted teeth, “doesn’t explain why you’re suddenly – _up for it_.”

“Don’t denigrate yourself, Mr. Garibaldi,” Bester says cheerfully. “I may have no respect whatsoever for you as a human being –”

“At least _that_ feeling is mutual,” Garibaldi says, glaring.

“– but, speaking in purely physical terms, I’ve been ‘up for it’ since the moment we met.”

“…you mean the time you read my mind and found me thinking about shoving your investigation so far up your ass that –”

“Precisely.”

“Bester, I mean this in the nicest way possible,” Garibaldi says, “but what the _hell_ is wrong with you?”

Bester shrugs. “I’m not the one trying to convince myself that I’m being – ah – ‘mind-whammied’ into agreeing.” He pauses and makes a face. “Really, Mr. Garibaldi? _Whammied_?”

“It’s a perfectly reasonable way to describe it.”

“As an expert on the subject – no. It isn’t.”

“I can’t believe I’m seriously considering sleeping with you,” Garibaldi sighs. 

“If it makes you feel better,” Bester says, and boy howdy have those words never led up to something good, “you can always blame your moment of weakness on it having been rather a long time for you.”

Garibaldi hates this guy _so much_.

Like, he’s still going to take Bester up on the offer, because it _has_ been ‘rather’ a long time – aka, a _hell_ of a long time – but he doesn’t have to be _into_ it or anything.

“Would it help you stop dithering if I offered to let you tie me up?”

Scratch that. He is _totally_ into this.

Fucking telepaths. 

“You’d trust me to do that?” he asks instead of jumping forward like he’s a horny teenager being led into a darkened bedroom for the first time. 

“Still a telepath,” Bester reminds him. “If you so much as think of trying anything I don’t want you to do, I’ll turn you into little more than a human puppet.”

Great. Garibaldi’s never going to get the mental image of himself, blank-eyed, rutting mindlessly between Bester’s legs as Bester laughs at him out of his head.

“…well, then,” Bester says after a long moment, blinking a little. “I must admit your reaction to that was a bit more... _enthusiastic_ than I was expected.”

“Shut up,” Garibaldi says, pressing the heel of palm into his lap in a futile ‘down, boy’ gesture. “Listen, are we going to do this or not?”

Bester smirks and puts his hands over his head.

Garibaldi is so very, very glad that he has handcuffs in his pocket. 

“You’d better have some ideas on how to get around that not liking physical contact thing,” Garibaldi warns him as he strings him up, pulling the cuffs maybe a little tighter than he ought to. 

It makes Bester’s gloves ride up, just a little. 

“I have several ideas, Mr. Garibaldi,” Bester says, droll as ever. “In fact, I –”

Garibaldi takes a chance and swipes his thumb across that tiny flash of bared flesh. 

Bester actually stops talking for half a second as he shivers.

Garibaldi grins. Maybe with a bit of teeth, but – well. It doesn’t seem like Bester minds.

“You were saying?” he prompts, wondering exactly how many layers Bester is wearing and how many Bester will let him peel off of him. Possibly with a knife.

Bester’s eyes are fixed on him and he looks like he might even be considering allowing it. 

Maybe he’d agree if Garibaldi let him be the one to guide the knife...

Bester doesn’t do anything so uncouth as groan at the thought – his face stays the same, hateful officious mask as ever – but Garibaldi’s kneeling between his legs and he can _feel_ Bester twitch with interest at the thought.

After all, Bester might be a soulless murderous telepath bureaucrat, but he’s still a man.

“Promises, promises, Mr. Garibaldi,” Bester drawls. His voice doesn’t so much as shake, the bastard. “Perhaps I’ll take you up on that at some point when I wouldn’t have to explain the lack to our eventual rescuers.”

“Well,” Garibaldi says. “To quote someone, can’t think who: anytime, anywhere, _Mister_ Bester.”

For the first time in the entire time Garibaldi’s known the guy, Bester’s lips pull back into a grin. It’s a lot more savage than the fake ones that never reach his eyes. A lot more violent, a lot less sane.

Garibaldi likes this one better.

“I specified that I dislike _unnecessary_ physical contact,” Bester says, and arches his back. “I think, under the circumstances, we can limit ourselves to what might be – necessary. Don’t you?”

Garibaldi has a brief mental image – very much _not_ his own – of the two of them pressed up close together, Garibaldi grinding down with his superior weight and height, both of them still fully clothed except for what was, in Bester’s terms, _necessary_.

“Sounds reasonable,” Garibaldi says, then wraps his hand around the wrist of Bester’s non-paralyzed right hand, sliding his thumb under the leather until he can press it down on Bester’s palm, which probably hasn’t been touched by another human being in what is probably literally years. 

“Decades,” Bester says, his voice low and dark, promising all sorts of terrible things. 

But, as Bester so likes to remind Garibaldi, he’s a telepath. If he wanted to stop Garibaldi, he could –

But he’s not.

As far as Garibaldi’s concerned, that’s permission.

“You’ll be able to tell if someone’s coming, right?” Garibaldi checks. As embarrassing as being rescued by Ivanova is inevitably going to be, he thinks she might actually kill him if she walks in on him fucking Bester’s thighs. 

“Depends,” Bester says. “How much of my attention do you expect to you’ll be taking up?”

“Oh, _fuck you_ ,” Garibaldi says, because he’s never been able to resist a challenge.

“That, Mr. Garibaldi, is, in fact, the _idea_.”

(They manage to get rid of the evidence before Ivanova shows up, but given what he knows about Bester’s probable range of perception, Garibaldi’s pretty proud of how closely they had to cut it. And, well, if they make some tentative plans the next time some Psi Corps stuff happens to bring Bester to Babylon 5 to spend the night, well, that’s their own damn business, isn’t it?)


End file.
